INTRODUCTION
Welcome back to Community Resilience, a podcast created in collaboration with the Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project, facilitated by the Global Ecovillage Network. I’m your host, Eva Goldfarb, inviting you to gather around the fire as we explore resilience, adaptation, and transformation in our time of deepening polycrisis.
Joining me today are two remarkable women from GENOA, the Global Ecovillage Network Oceania and Asia branch. We have Thao Kin, the current regional representative, and Trudy Juriansz, her predecessor and one of the project leads, who has played a pivotal role in bridging communities across borders and disciplines. Trudy is a key figure in fostering collaboration across Asia and Oceania. With a rich history of coordinating and leadership roles within GEN, both internationally and regionally, Trudy has been a catalyst for numerous projects and initiatives. Her work spans from coordinating democratic schools for refugees in Thailand to managing a forest garden education center in Sri Lanka. Now she’s pioneering a new international land-based community in Queensland, Australia.
Kin is an earth steward, a community weaver, and an environmental trainer from Vietnam. Since joining GEN in 2016, Kin has been passionate about creating spaces that evoke wonder and awe in nature. Her dedication to this cause led her to co-found Project Awe, an eco-community in Northwest Vietnam. In this episode, we dive deep into the role of regional representatives in the resilience project, exploring how their unique positions allow them to gather invaluable insights and foster resilience within their communities.
Trudy and Kin share their experiences, challenges, and the powerful lessons that they’ve learned along the way. Whether you’re interested in community building, sustainability, or simply looking for inspiration, this conversation is sure to resonate with you.
INTERVIEW
Eva: Welcome Kin and Trudy, two of our regional representatives from GENOA, or the Global Ecovillage Network Oceania region. I want to start by letting you both introduce yourselves briefly. Where are you in the world and what brought you here today, if you can share that shortly. Whoever would like to start, maybe Kin?
Kin: Sure, hi Eva, happy to be here with Trudy. I am calling from the west of Vietnam, where I’m living on a mountain range and really happy to be here. I’ve been with the project since the beginning, the resilience project, and been a big fan of it, even though I’m not one of the ecovillage representatives. That is a part that I’ve learned a lot as a regional representative. I’m happy to be here.
Trudy: Thanks Kin, and thanks Eva for holding this space for the resilience podcast. I’m Trudy, and I’m part of the GEN Resilience team that’s been kind of holding this process over the last two and a half years. I’m currently based on the east coast of Australia, the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, and my heritage is Sri Lankan. I come from Sri Lanka and spent a big part of my life over there. Thank you for having us.
Eva: Thank you both for being here. I also hear that you are both co-founders of new ecovillages in your areas. This is very exciting. This is also a process that I’m embarking on at the moment. I’m hoping you can both tell us a bit about it. What are you loving about the journey at the moment? Maybe we can go reverse this time. Trudy, if you’d like to start, then we can hear from Kin.
Trudy: Yeah, sure. Maybe I didn’t quite answer the previous question of how we came here to be here today, which is also what’s brought me into the process of creating community where I am. But I started this journey in 2011 when I was in Sri Lanka. Actually, previously I was in Myanmar and spent a lot of time high by my border and in Myanmar. I learned about GEN and the ecovillage movement and this beautiful ecovillage movement actually in Myanmar, which we don’t really hear so much about. But then I deepened that knowledge and understanding when I was in Sri Lanka when I met some colleagues from Gaia Ashram in Thailand. Then I just fell in love with this network and the work that was happening. I spent possibly over 10 years working with Gen International and GENOA, the Gen Oceania Asia. So, yeah, quite deeply involved and visited many ecovillages in Asia and in Australia and done a lot of ecovillage projects in these countries. And now being in Australia, moving from Sri Lanka five years ago and in Australia, I’ve been in process for the last three years with the collective of people. We have this beautiful vision and dream to create our own community here. Yeah, it’s like with all communities, as you probably know and spoken with, it’s a process and it takes time. There’s a lot of time involved in spending time with each other and understanding each other and working out how do we actually make this happen. And we’ve got to the point now in our process where we’ve got legal structures registered. So we’ve got two legal entities, one that will own the land and one that will run the community, a co-op. We’ve created a business plan. We’ve got a consent decision making process. We’ve got new members coming in and we’re in the process of looking for land. So it’s very exciting, but there’s a lot of work in Australia. It’s really different with working with government, you know, and I think we might get deeper into that later in this conversation, but it’s been a beautiful process so far and a lot of hard work as well.
Eva: Thank you Trudy. Kin, if you’d like to reflect as well in the process.
Kin: Yeah, so I have only heard of what an ecovillage is when I attended the Ecovillage Design Education course back in 2016 in Gaia Ashram in Thailand. And that’s where I met Trudy as well for the first time. And I felt really amazed, like mind blown by the idea and by how much I’ve learned in that course, how much I felt really resonated and at ease thinking about working on regeneration with a community, with a group of people. And I have been brewing this idea of wanting to have a community where I can belong to in Vietnam. And it took quite a few years, till two years ago, together with a group, we have actually only six people. We bought the land two years ago and moved to the land more than a year ago. And now we’re living here as a small community, like really new kids on the block, if you compare it to other communities and ecovillages in gen. But it has been a very deep, transformative journey for me already, because I’ve learned a lot about how to work with others, how to talk about, discuss, make plans about really difficult topics like our relationship with money and power, and learned a lot on how to work, observe a very particular piece of land and ecosystem, how to work with it. And I think everything I have learned from being a part of GEN now, I have the opportunity to actually live it, practice it. It feels very much like a blessing to really just starting to understand a little bit deeper to what I have heard and learned from others all these years.
Eva: Thank you both for sharing. One thing that has been a pattern through these interviews is this notion of how quickly you learn within the ecovillage setting. So I’m just hearing that reflected again from both of you, both on an interpersonal level and about the ecosystem that you’re caring for. So we will get into that a bit more later as well. During this podcast series, we’ve been sharing about gen as a network, as well as hearing from many different ecovillages that have been participating on the project. And you represent a very important function of the network, which is the regional representation. This is kind of the bridge between the ecovillages and the Global Ecovillage Network. And I’m hoping you can share a bit about the role of GENOA within the wider ecovillage network, kind of taking into consideration that the region of Oceania and Asia has incredibly diverse socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental context. So there is a bit of complexity there. Kin, if you want to start.
Kin: I can start and then maybe Trudy can add if she wants to. So currently, I’m the network weaver at GENOA, the Global Ecovillage Network, Oceania and Asia. And I actually inherited this role from Trudy, who was my predecessor. And in GENOA, we have members that are ecovillages, communities, individuals, and also we are connected with other networks, like like-minded networks. And we want to support either individuals or communities to really head towards regenerative ways of living, to practice, to share, to explore and evolve together. And we have been doing that by connecting communities and ecovillages and individuals so that we can really amplify the learnings and connect for a bigger impact. We have also been encouraging people to develop more and more regenerative practice in different areas. We use the map of regeneration that’s very famous in GENOA with like social, cultural, economic, and ecology. And then we also have different educational programs to build capacity to exchange knowledge, cross-pollinate for both individuals and communities. Some of them we collaborate with other regions in GENOA, with the GEN Global, GEN International. And we also aim to really showcase, make visible the practice and the impact that are being done by members of the network so they can be like the lighthouse, inspiring people to go towards regeneration pathways. So that’s how I see the role of GENOA as the regional practice and a network. And we also have the regional network is quite big. As you said, it’s both Asia and Oceania, geographically very big and also very diverse. So inside GENOA, we have urban, suburban, rural communities. We also have traditional communities who have been living together for so long as like villages. There’s also intentional communities. There’s communities with very different backgrounds in terms of politics, religions, economic standards, and all. So it’s been quite interesting learning from all of them. And I think that’s the complexity in GENOA with such big diversity, even language, it’s both a blessing and a challenge. And it’s also been very fruitful just to have different people to connect to and learn from. Yeah.
Eva: Trudy, would you like to add to speaking to GENOA as a regional representative? Otherwise, I will move on to the next question.
Trudy: I think Kin has shared quite nicely and clearly. So I’m really happy that I don’t have too much more to add, and I think we’ll flow on as we go.
Eva: Beautiful. So with that lens throughout the resilience project, the ecovillages have really been on this discovery journey of what resilience is and points in which the ecovillages have needed to be resilient in the past.
Kind of zooming out from this process and looking at it from a regional perspective. I’m wondering what patterns you have observed through your region and also the ecovillages participating in the project. I know there’s a lot of diversity there again, but just some patterns and challenges that communities are facing.
Trudy: Yeah. And maybe I can kind of speak to this a little bit and also build it in and carrying on from what Kin shared previously. We have diversity is a huge strength in the region, but it can also be the cause of also many challenges. And like Kin shared, the network is so broad that it ranges from intentional communities to traditional villages to eco projects and all these different types and variations of how ecovillage or community plays out. The network is diverse. The region is naturally diverse from coastal communities to communities that are inland to communities that are in the mountain region. So the geography affects the communities as well, their cultures and languages Kin shared. But also many of the communities that are in the network are on the front lines of climate change and have been very much in this mode of industrialization and even more so. And also kind of noticing that within GENOA, we also in areas where it’s very materially wealthy as compared to other areas that are not so materially well off. And if I compare from where I came from in Sri Lanka and the communities that are there versus where I am now in Australia, where it’s a completely different environment. And when we’re talking about climate change and polycrisis, I feel like a lot of the communities in Asia are really at the forefront of this. In Oceania, we have Australia, we have New Zealand, but we also have a lot of the island communities that are facing sea level rises. And one community in the Solomon Islands is having to actually move back and they’re really having to face this challenge and work with government and talking about how they can relocate. In Australia, we’ve had bushfires and we’ve had floods, but I feel like sometimes when these things pass, it’s like people forget because we do live in a much more well-off situation. We have communities that are really at the forefront of polycrisis. And as an example, we have a community that’s part of the Resilience Project, “Beds”. They’re from Bangladesh and they’re based in the Sunderbans. And the Sunderbans is like the largest delta in the world. It’s where three rivers come together. And it’s so diverse. There’s probably about four and a half million people that live in this region. And this community, it’s actually a network of communities and they’ve faced so many challenges. And one of the challenges they shared with us was that there’s been a lot of the tourism has exploded in that region. So they’re having to face all the challenges that come with that and the pollution and kind of like, yeah, it’s very unsustainable. There’s a lot of chemical agriculture that’s also quite prevalent. So high chemical use is also really polluting these river basin. So this network is really trying to educate the farmers that are in their communities to do organic agriculture and trying to kind of like shift into that. But it’s been a big challenge for them. And when they talk about crisis, the first thing that really comes to their mind or what they talk about is the ecological crisis that they face in their communities. So that’s something also that we are aware of and how that also differs from region to region in our network. I think that those are some good examples. And I wonder if, Kin, if you have any more that you’d like to also add to that.
Kin: Yeah, I think you have displayed really well. I think I really want to emphasize on how a lot of the communities are vulnerable to the political crisis that we’re facing, both in terms of ecological crisis, we have climate change, and a lot of communities are being affected by extreme weather events, storm, typhoons, droughts, floods, or like salinization, like in the case of BDS in Bangladesh, and also the social political crisis, like some of them are inside conflict zones. So all of these different challenges are very much affecting how communities can not just be resilient, but also how they can keep the connections with the network with other communities. And there was, just want to add an example of Maya Earth Village back in, I think, 2021, there was a typhoon, Typhoon Rai, that came through and pretty much destroyed all of their settlements. And afterwards, they run a campaign on themselves. And then we shared it within the GENOA network to bring people and resources in to help them recover after the typhoon. So I think things like this is something that we can definitely be more well aware of as a network, and also find ways to support each other to respond to challenges like that.
Eva: I’m very curious if your participation in the Resilience Project equipped you with any tools or bigger takeaways to help in your communications with these communities that are more on the forefront of public crisis.
Trudy: I can share an example, like during the Resilience Project, during the process, you know, we have a community called Earthsong, that’s part of the network and part of the project. And they had some extreme rains and flooding events that happened. And interestingly, they’re an urban community, you know, in a very small urban community, right in the midst of a bigger neighbourhood. And when these events happened, the neighbours were actually really affected by the flood. And through their design processes in the community, they didn’t have it affect them as much. But they had people from the neighbouring, their friends all actually coming to the village and asking for support, asking for a place to be. And they found that they were having to actually open their doors to these kind of like local climate refugees. And so that was something we found really interesting. And I think you’re going to be interviewing Robert Allison from Earthsong, and you can probably find out more details about that. But that was a really interesting fact for them also to actually reflect on. It’s like, actually, how do we respond as communities, you know, in the wider community? Because we are going to have more extreme weather events. How do we facilitate space and process to bring people in? And can we actually do that? Do we have the capacity to do that? So these were big questions that came up during the project that a lot of the communities were asking and reflecting on, you know, in the process. So this was, I thought, a really good example. And, you know, the communities through this process, we’ve learned so much in what they’ve shared, and how resilient they feel they are as community members on an individual level. How are they resilient at a community level? And there’s a lot of tools and practices that were shared. And there were lots of common practices, but there were also really individual ones, you know, but they also learned that they feel that they are resilient. But when they look at themselves, and really look at the bigger picture and what’s happening, a lot of them shared, actually, we’re not really resilient. But if we compare ourselves to other communities, and the broader mainstream public, yeah, actually, we are, you know, so there’s this question, and feedback that they get, and knowing also there’s space to improve and how they can grow as well. Yeah, I’ll pass on to you, Kin.
Kin: Thanks, Trudy. I think I just want to add a touch of perspective from being the regional representative journey with the different ecovillages in the project. I first found it was a great opportunity for me to understand the ecovillages better, because they have done a lot of different workshops and exercises as part of the project in which they share more about their history, about different aspects, about their focus, and also what practice they’re using personally and collectively to respond to certain disturbance, and things like that we don’t really get to talk about a lot with communities. So it’s just a chance to understand them better, and also together journeying to these reflections of, like Trudy said, how resilient they think they are, and how resilient they want to be, and what kind of, like, where’s the gaps, how they can continue developing these strengths, the strength they already have, and fill in the gaps. I think that has been a very interesting process, and it got me thinking of how it would be very helpful for other ecovillages and communities in the network to actually go through this process, to share with each other, have dialogues, exchange around different topics related to resilience. Actually, Trudy and I, we also talked about how it would be great to have some sessions where we invited the communities who were part of the resilience project to share their experience and learnings with other communities who have not yet had the chance to be part of. There would be, like, ripple effects from the learning of the communities who were there.
Eva: Amazing. I really look forward to hearing more as you develop this community outreach or regional outreach. If you plan any events to host this, please do share it with us, and I will add it to the show notes. I really think this notion of identifying the gaps or the spaces of improvement was one of the intentions behind the resilience project, so it’s nice to hear that that came through and has been helpful. So we have talked a bit about the different types of ecovillages that make up the GENOA region, and I want to focus a bit on traditional communities and see how you think traditional knowledge and culture practices contribute to resilience in communities across Asia and Oceania. Do you have any examples of how cultural resilience has helped communities overcome challenges?
Kin: I think for this, we would love to share some, maybe, examples. I can share one first, and maybe, pass to Trudy, if you have something to share. I think traditional knowledge and wisdom and culture play a very important part, and especially where I come from in Vietnam, and maybe I can speak for, like, Asia in general, because we still keep quite tight roots to our indigenous and traditional wisdom, and we have a community here in Vietnam that has been built 15 years ago. They currently have 150 people living in an area not so far from the capital, and they were actually replaced. They replaced indigenous because the area where they used to live was taken to become a military site, so they were relocated to a new location. They are one of the ethnic minorities in Vietnam, and now they have been displaced and lived among the main ethnic, which is Kin. I’m also one of the Kin people, and the community is from Thai minority, so it’s different ethnicity, and since they started rebuilding the community, they have set up that the preservation of their traditional practice is so important, and they started to do that since the beginning, 15 years ago, and now when we visit them, we can see very strongly how that had an impact on the way they lived. So firstly, they kept all of the indigenous practice around medicine, about natural building, about cooking, and they grow all of the herbs and ingredients they would use in their traditional cooking around their house, and they know what kind of medicinal plants to use for certain illness, and it’s like a common knowledge for them, and it’s not a common knowledge for us now, like in mainstream society. So I think that one is already very strong on how we can just preserve this knowledge that had been built by our ancestors living so close to nature and understanding nature and how we can work with nature, and also there’s a lot of cultural practices that they have kept that really, I think, build this harmonious relationship with nature and with each other, especially on the terms of gratitude and respect. So for example, in Vietnam, we have this tradition of celebrating the first harvest of the year, or the first day going to work after the lunar new year, and this has been a very long-term celebration, and in many places in Vietnam, they still keep it, but they celebrate it more like a chance to party, rather than having any deeper meaning connected to why it started. But in this community, these intentional communities that I’m talking about, they do this ceremony very respectfully. The elders would share why they’re doing it, to show respect to nature, to share part of the first harvest back to nature, and to show that we thank nature for all of the support that we have received, like for having good rain, for having the sunshine, the nutrition, so that we have this food. And this is also a very special occasion for the communities to really bond over dancing, rituals, and meals together, and I think they kept it really beautifully, that I think a lot of the places in Vietnam, even though we had it in the past, we’re kind of now losing these traditions, and this community managed to keep it. So that was really beautiful to see.
Eva: Thank you very much. I just want to quickly touch on the importance of celebration and respect to the natural world. These are two big topics that have also been reoccurring patterns in my interviews, and I thank you for bringing them an example. Trudy, would you also like to add an example of a traditional knowledge or community, and how their practices contribute to resilience?
Trudy: Yeah, I mean, I can just share a little bit, you know, in Australia, we have a very rich culture of Indigenous culture that’s been around, as you know, for like more than 60,000 years. And some of the communities in Australia have been able to preserve culture a lot, but many of them have been fragmented through colonization, which is a very tragic history of this country and a very sad story for most of the Aboriginal communities here. But even through the hardships and through this really traumatic history, they are still resilient, they still hold the stories, you know, from the past, even though families were split apart and children taken away. And, you know, it’s the stolen generation where children were taken away from their mothers and put into communities, put into missions where they had to learn the colonial way or the white way. And, you know, when you separate people from their land, you separate people from their family and culture, they lose everything. And it’s been huge sadness for many of these communities. But in that they still remember, in remembering stories from their mothers and their families, the stories carry their history and their culture. And for them, it’s their law. It’s the law of the land, you know, and when they have that connection to land, they know how to live with it. I’ve had the real honor and privilege to have worked with the community, Indigenous community in Far North Queensland. And I worked with them for three years and was able to really get deep into the space with them and be in circle and to hear their stories. And some of them very sad, you know, but they’ve really come together to kind of step up to the world and to the local council and the local society and to say, you know what, we’re here. And even though we’ve had all this trauma happen, we’re still going to stand on our two feet and we’re going to hold our heads high and we’re going to work through this. And they were really interested, actually, as I worked with them and shared about like the ecovillage principles and was trying to understand and hear what their views and what their vision was for the future. And that was kind of what they asked me to come in to help them to share with the world. So I was able to really go into process and hear some of these stories and hear what they wanted to do and document that so that they could then share this broadly and say to their local governments, this is what we want and this is how we want you to help us. There is a lot of support out there for traditional communities. But sometimes they don’t always have a say in how they want resources to be, that comes to them to be used. So for them to be able to have something that they could show to them, to local government and say, this is how we want to spend funds and this is how we want our community to thrive, was a really big deal. And in that, they’ve really come a long way. They’ve had many events happened. And they get hit by many things. One of the things that did hit them a few years ago was a cyclone. And in that time, they were cut off. The roads were cut off. They didn’t have electricity. But they were able to come together in their community hall and fend for themselves and support each other. And that strong bond of family, you know, kinship was really able to see them through. And remembering the stories and what one of the processes that we were able to support them with was to actually have the elders share some of the stories as tragic as they are with the younger generation. The older generation also felt for a time where they had to kind of hold these stories because they were too traumatic to share. But they’ve realized, like, actually, we need these stories to be known. The younger generation need to know about this so that they can actually learn how to be resilient. They have to learn from what we’ve gone through so they’re not going to be pushed down again. So it’s really opened up a big space of truth telling in the communities. And they’re able to kind of work through that. There’s still a long way to go. The elders have really stepped up. The community are really getting involved. There’s a lot of projects happening now that’s really supporting people in the community to actually, like, be motivated to do things on the land. It’s been really wonderful. But yeah, still a long way to go for them. But their stories and their culture is strong. And that’s what really holds them as they work through the times of crisis.
Eva: There’s a lot of collective heartbreak there. And I have become more and more aware that traditional communities are disproportionately affected by the polycrisis. Yet somehow they remain these examples of resilience and especially connection to nature and a more respectful way of living as a human for the network as a whole. I’ve heard from many intentional communities who really draw from the traditional wisdom to help transform their Western ideals into respectful practices. So with this kind of lens, the regions really are bridges between a lot of different types of ecovillages. And I’m wondering if you can reflect on the value and opportunity of networking within your region. Specifically relating to some of the initiatives that GENOA has stewarded over the years, but as well as what you’ve witnessed in the community of practice. How are communities supporting each other in this journey? How can they support each other in this journey?
Kin: I can start. For us as GENOA, the possibilities of really bringing people together and share their stories to build understanding also build a lot of learning. Kind of amplifying the message, the aspiration, but also the impact. It’s very important. Pre-COVID, we had a regional gathering that I was not there at that time and Trudy was. We can comment on that more later. But I think the opportunity to really bring people together is really powerful because then they can share practice. They also feel very energized and motivated knowing that there are people who are dedicated to the same path all around the region, around the world. Because sometimes for communities that want to go towards regeneration, they can be a bit out of the mainstream. They can be different. They do different practices. They think in a different way compared to others. So it could get a bit frustrated and lonely sometimes. So really, that’s where the power of being part of the network would come in. We keep each other to stay grounded and also kind of like sharing the fires. Imagine keeping fires between peoples and communities to keep it alive. And just most recently, we had a project called From Ubuntu to Kapwa. It’s actually a collaboration project between three regions in GEN. We have Oceania and Asia. We have Africa and Casa Latina, which is the Latin American network. And we work on the diving deeper into how we can be informed by traditional and indigenous culture into be consciously developing regenerative food system. And with this first time, we did the collaborative project. We had three countries as pioneers in three different countries in the Philippines and Cameroon and in Colombia. And it was a very beautiful project because we did workshops in person in each country. And at the same time, we do online sections where the countries and the elders and also the different participants, stakeholders in each country can come together. They share what they did, but we also try to bring some of the essence of the cultural activities online. Even though it was difficult, not everything can be transmitted through Zoom, but we did our best. And I think it worked like a lot of people who were in the room was really deeply moved by this different indigenous teachings, the songs that people would use to bless the rice or the prayers that were shared from different countries. And I think that was one example of how, even though we come from many different backgrounds and cultures, there’s a lot of diversity that we can learn. The core is very much mutual, in common, how we want to treasure love and gratitude, how we really see community bonding and indigenous knowledge as the source of power for us. From that project, I think we have really highlighted it and we wish to do more of that work in the future as well. And I would love to also just want to add one more example. It’s an online education project that GENOA did. It started during COVID. Trudy was here and Sarah from the Philippines were the designers, the pioneers of the project. We called it RegenNations, and it’s our regional online version of an ecovillage design education course. And what I want to bring here is that through developing and conducting this project, we actually invited a lot of the thought leaders of trainers and elders of the region, Oceania and Asia, to come and share about what they have been doing with their communities, about the knowledge and the wisdom that they have. And that’s very beautiful, because usually before that, when we talk about a ecovillage design education course, a lot of the examples of the trainers are from out of the region. Not many of them are from our region, but through this project, we found out that there’s so much wisdom, so much treasure in this region that we can learn and share and we can bring people together. And the fact that we have, I think in that project, we have like 32 different speakers talking about different topics, coming from different countries. That was just really beautiful, being able to bring them together and share the depths of experience and knowledge that they have cultivated through the years. And they just fit nicely into the different areas of regeneration during that project.
Eva: Thank you very much, Kin. I will be sure to add some links to the show notes if anyone wants to explore that course or learn more about the Ubunty to Kapwa project. Thank you for sharing. Trudy, do you have anything to add about the power of networking, maybe even reflecting on some of the in-person events that you’ve been able to help coordinate?
Trudy: Yeah, I just want to just reiterate what Kin just said about the regenerations, you know, and really brought to focus how much we have in our region and the richness that we do have. But yeah, pre-COVID, we had the real honour of hosting these in-person gatherings, which were just amazing because it brought so much energy, so many different people’s ideas. And there’s so much that can happen and that can get ignited when hearts and minds come together. And so much of GENOA, of also what we have today in the network, were people coming to these gatherings and connecting with each other and, you know, courses and projects kind of being formed from that and growing. Networks have grown from these gatherings as well. We had someone, this was many years ago, from Bhutan come to one of our gatherings, you know, because he had heard about it. And he was invited by a representative from India and was just so inspired by what was happening in the region and went back to Bhutan and started the Bhutan Ecovillage Network. That’s an example of how things can get ignited as well. But we’ve hosted gatherings, you know, in India and Thailand and Sri Lanka, and it’s been really quite amazing. And I think one of the sad things to see is with COVID and with things actually going online, we start to see less of that. But I think we also have many trainings that have happened, you know, that also continue to happen, which I think is also really wonderful. But some of the trainings that also was able to ignite were some of the ecovillage design education courses that have happened, the in-depth courses, as Kin was sharing. We’ve had training of trainers that have also happened, which also helps to bring people together and ignites things. And the gatherings, Kin, like at Gaia Ashram, you know, Gaia Calling, that also brings a lot of young people together. And again, so much evolves from these, you know, in-person meetings. So I think that’s also the power of the region, you know, being able to hold space for people to actually come together and do these things. Because as a region and GENOA, we also have to think of it from a different lens. It’s a region and it’s also a network, but it’s also an organization. You know, so there’s also these like dualities that happen that sometimes we’ve also had to question and figure out, like, actually, what’s our role? We are a node in the network, you know, and we are a network, but we’re also an organization within the network. So it’s been an interesting balance over the years to also understand, like, what is the role that we play and how do we connect people? And, you know, what else do we need to bring and what is the need? And I think that’s a big question, I think, in GENOA at the moment. Like, where’s the need and what’s the niche that we can fill in the ecosystem? Like, what’s the space and is there something unique that we bring as well? You know, and I think through the Resilience Project, I’m hoping also that there’s a lot of these questions that are going to be looked at in the network and in GENOA as the organizations. Like, because we have so many communities at the front lines of climate change, how do we service, how do we support these communities from this angle? And I think these are going to be really interesting questions to explore. And hopefully we’re going to create more space for that as well.
Eva: We will also create a bit of space to go deeper into that future dreaming in a moment. But first, I would love to hear a bit wider than the network, how you have, as a region, been collaborating with local governments, other regional organizations. If there’s any learnings from this resilience journey that have impacted your regional policy.
Kin: Thanks, Eva. This is actually a tough question when it comes to policies, because every country is different. But I also just want to take this opportunity to highlight that there’s amazing work done by national networks in different countries in GENOA. So we are a regional network, but there’s also GEN in Japan, South Korea, Australia, now in China and soon in India as well. And they have done a lot of work bringing communities together, echoing on certain message and practice. And I think it would be also interesting to learn if they have made any impact on social or political level in their own country. But just the fact that people can come together, sharing the same language, because language is obviously very diverse in GENOA. So not everyone can come to an English-speaking gathering. But the opportunities to actually be with each other and speak their own language in exchange, I think is very beautiful. And a lot of practice can be echoed and learned in that way. And I just want to share this point from more like a personal level, coming from a community here in Vietnam. I think the relationship with the local government is one of the very key relationships that we acknowledge and we want to build at a very early stage. And I think for us, there’s a lot that we envision that we can bring to the surrounding area, to the communities that are living around where we live. But first, we want to learn how things are here, like how people have been living, what’s their way, what’s their understanding. And one of the ways we can do that is actually by collaborating and being in conversation with the local government. And also understand what is the development trajectory for the area as well, so that we can see where we can contribute in the long term. And I think that’s very important because for us, when we first came here, we had a lot of ideas. We want to experiment this and that, and we think it’s going to be very good for the region. But as we are here and slowly, slowly immerse ourselves in the area, we understand that this is a conversation that it takes time. And first, to build relationship and build trust with the local government and with the people around is very important. And I think that part is something that a lot of communities have been doing really well. I had the opportunity to visit Gaia Ashram in Thailand, for example, quite frequently. And I see how much they are connected to the local government there. And they have shared with the local government about the practice of like permaculture, organic farming, build business that using sourcing materials from the local areas, from the people around. And now they’re also building an eco school with the local government. So I think those are like big steps, being able to work on a project with the local government. So I think as we are persistent on our path and just keep learning and building relationship, there’s a lot of beautiful flowers can go from there. And I see Gaia Ashram as an example because I understand that example more than others. But I believe that there are a lot more from communities around the region.
Eva: Thank you very much. Coming back a bit to the point that you were speaking to earlier, Trudy. We have done a lot of future visioning through the Resilience Project. And I’m very curious what you see as future priorities for resilience building within GENOA. You know, this might be a difficult question or a question that is not so clear yet. But if you have anything else to share on this topic, now is the time.
Trudy: Yeah, and maybe I’ll just build on kind of what I was sharing before. I think there’s a big space and I think it’s a really important space, actually. And I think the region, GENOA as an organization, needs to hold that space for the network. Again, it’s not so clear how we can do it. And we need to discuss and share. You know, we share our learnings. I think that’s the first step. It’s like take the learnings from the Resilience Project and share that with the council and with kind of like the holding circle. And then share that more broadly with the network and then maybe collectively decide how we can move forward together. But because we’re such a diverse region and we have so many communities that are affected by climate change and the polycrisis, we do need to hold space for that. You know, we do really need to genuinely like look at that and question how do we actually support communities in the network? How can we really bring resilience in? And I think we have these beautiful principles that are part of the Map of Regeneration. You know, the Gen Design cards, the Map of Regeneration and the resilience attributes. You know, and this is a work that we’re doing actually in the project is looking at how we can integrate them. Because as we move forward and through the future, we need to design for regeneration, but we need to design for resilience, you know. And we need to bring all these principles together and what we’ve learned so that communities can really integrate this. And there’s been big learnings from the communities that have participated in the project that we can carry forward and share with communities that are evolving, pioneering communities, as well as communities that are older and more established. Because at some point in the near future, we’re all going to be facing it. And we need to be ready with the tools and know how can we respond and maybe even be more proactive rather than just responding. So I feel like from a regional perspective, there’s a big responsibility in taking this knowledge and then really helping it to kind of spread out and pollinate further. And yeah, I hope that we’ll be able to really make that space to do that.
Eva: You remind me of a quote from one of our early episodes with Bruno Tambelini from Piracanga in Brazil. He says, “climate change is for everyone”. Very simple, a little dark humor.
Trudy: Yeah, well, we can’t run away from it, you know, and we can try to sweep it under the carpet and be complacent about it. But it is going to come back. It’s there, you know, it’s not going away.
Eva: That’s the importance of working on these tools to figure out how we can respond and cope to the coming changes. So on that notion, I’m wondering what some of the valuable tools for resilience that you have seen in ecovillages that can really be shared with the wider world. And why do you think these are so valuable?
Kin: Well, I think there’s a lot of different tools and learnings that we can share. It probably would take a lot of time if we go through each and every one of them. But I think every ecovillages would have their strengths in certain areas. And we’re all moving towards a holistic design. Trying to build our resilience in different aspects. Some communities would be stronger in ecosystem restoration and they would share some practice and learning towards that. And then the others would be more on the social and how to resolve conflict in communities. And recently we have some community call in GENOA where we invite members of communities to come and share. An example of a tool would be micro-gifting. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. But it’s the idea of people build collective parts where it could just be gifts for members of the community who are in need. Regardless of asking them to explain in details and report what we use this money for. It’s built on trust and generosity. It could be every month or every year members of the community put in a pot. And then that pot will be used to support as the next year goes. To support anyone who’s in trouble, who needs urgent support financially. So that’s one beautiful practice. And there’s also a lot of practice on supporting each other in different forms of capital. It’s something that’s very popular in communities. So we acknowledge that there are many other capitals than just money. So there could be intellectual capital. It could be relationship capital. So utilizing all of this capital and sharing knowledge about how we can support each other in more than just one form of capital. I think it’s also something that I’ve learned and saw in many different ecovillages.
Eva: Thank you very much. I’m curious to hear from you if there’s anything in particular from the Resilience Project that you’ve really taken and either integrated or are in the process of integrating into your process of building an ecovillage.
Trudy: Well, I think some of the things that happen in communities is that because you’re living in close proximity to each other, you become mirrors to each other. And so there’s actually like a big space for personal growth because you’re in that evolution process. Like you see yourself, you see your triggers. Some of the things that we’ve learned through this Resilience Project is that you bring a lot of your background, your context, your traumas with you when you enter community. And so there might be things that happen that will trigger you. And I really, for me, that’s a beautiful thing to remember and also to embrace. And even though it might be hard, it’s important to just to accept that and to kind of work through that. And also the thing that I found really also interesting is, you know, during COVID, in most of society, people were separated. They were not allowed to see each other. But people that were in community, like they didn’t have that any social anxiety or missing out or having that human connection because they were together. They were together in lockdown. And that’s also a really beautiful thing when you have this kind of decentralization. And some of the things that I learned also was when there is a crisis or a challenge in community, somehow it enabled communities to actually just come together in solidarity and collaborate and work through those issues. You know, and somehow those crisis just brought them together even more and made them stronger. That’s also a really beautiful thing to know that, okay, we can have process, we can have protocol. But when something really does get really bad, that we’ll have each other and we can work through that. And so I think some important principles to take away are like, you know, there’s a great sense of trust within communities with each other. There’s a sense of collaboration and sharing. There’s also one of the things they shared is like they have common meetings and have common gatherings or have and have them regularly once a week, once a fortnight. That’s something we do in our community at the moment is that we meet weekly and we have regular campouts and gatherings where we can go deeper into process over a weekend period.And having those skills or really practicing those skills of listening to each other, really deeply listening with empathy so that you can really be there and hear each other so that you can work through whatever is at the forefront. And I think that’s really important when we start to talk about all these crises that are happening, these multiple converging crises, like how do we work through them? How can we really listen to each other and come together and work through them with love in our hearts? That was a big thing that came from the project as well, that a lot of communities that have been around for a while, they have a real deep love and care for each other and they love being together. And I think that’s also something beautiful and something I really hope that we continue to cultivate in our forming community as well. You know, we love being together. We love hanging out. We work. We work really hard, but we also love and care for each other. And I think that’s beautiful. You know, it’s this beautiful connection and yeah, almost like a marriage with like multiple people because you’re just there in it together.
Eva: I’m curious if you have any advice for someone who is in a similar process of creating community.
Kin: This actually would bring me to one of my favorite learning from the resilience project. It’s like at the end of the project, there’s this resilient tracker. Hopefully, I think soon the tool will be shared to a wider community. But for me, looking at my own community is very helpful because it’s like a compass. When we are starting our community, we can get four to one direction, focusing heavily on, for example, at the moment where I am, we’re focusing very much on regenerating the land. So the ecology part of it and like building new structure in an equal ways and how to source our energy in an eco and efficient way as well. So we are very much focusing on that. And sometimes we can get in that direction and neglect other aspects of our resilience, like building relationship to each other. Like what Trudy just said, how we can build trust, openness inside a community, how we can make space for things to land for reflection. And I think that’s a big invitation from the resilience project is the whole series of different activities. I see them as reflections for communities when they come together and they look at a certain angle, their communities. A lot of communities probably don’t really have intentional space to look at them and could show them some blind spots they probably have. And for me, it’s like make sure that you breathe in, not just keep breathing all the time, doing all of the work out there, but also nourishing the inner resilience and the connection and the trust within community. So that’s very much linked to what you just shared. And as an observer, hearing all of the stories from other communities and reflecting back to my own communities, I think that was like a very big, big learning. And I am very aware of how necessary this internal breath is, how much it can really cost to fully develop and build community from scratch.
Eva: I’m curious what your individual tools for building resilience in your lives have been to help you cope with these processes.
Trudy: Yeah, it’s evolved and changed over time as well. And as you get older, you know, but I think reflection is a big one. Just being able to take that time to stop and reflect on a personal level and using tools for me, meditation and yoga and movement for me is a really big one. Being able to dance and music, singing is a huge one as well. So there’s different practices that I use on a daily basis that helps me stay centered and focused. And also just taking that pause to take a deep breath when the time is needed. For me also, I have a tendency to throw myself deep into work, into whatever project that I’m working on. And especially being in GENOA for a long time and giving so much. And then you realize, oh, where’s the space for myself? So having the courage to actually stop and say, you know what, I need to pass the baton. I need to pass the flame on to other people so that I can breathe and find my center again and come back when I’m feeling okay. And I think that’s also like a really important part of resilience is being able to really notice that about yourself. Notice when you’re having those moments of vulnerability and seeing yourself and just going, I need to take a break. I need to check out for a minute. And I have friends and I have people here who can step in and giving them the opportunity to be able to step in. And that was, it’s been a really beautiful process in GENOA as well. Like as a team, several of us colleagues putting in a lot of work and then being able to step out and feel confident. Because we trust the people that are stepping in and we have that friendship. And so it’s been a big learning curve in my life. But also just huge, so much gratitude for the people that are a part of our network and the people that are in the team of GENOA. And how far we’ve come and how resilient we are actually through all of this on that personal level. And having that real groundedness, I feel that’s a really important aspect as well.
Eva: Thank you, Trudy. Kin, do you have anything to add then? Might be a very helpful tool for someone listening.
Kin: Well, I echo a lot with what Trudy said. I share some of the same practice. And for me, spending time to really be in nature, to observe what’s happening around. To look really deeply, like just sit in a spot in the garden, look deeply at what’s happening around me. It’s like a great medicine for myself. And really the moments that I can really try to be still, to observe, to be with nature. It is where I think a lot of my moment of awe in nature actually happens and it gives me the sense of humbleness and also gracefulness of being a part of something a lot bigger than myself and all of the consumed thought about my problems suddenly become not so big of a problem anymore compared to this like vastness of beauty that I’m a part of. So like the sense of awe, sense of wonder, things really intentionally take time out of the day to just keep space for that to happen. I think it’s very important and that’s also why we came up with the project Here in Vietnam Project Awe. We want to cultivate more of things like that.
Eva: Really putting the context of your life in perspective. Thank you. What a beautiful name for an ecovillage project. Before we part ways for the day, I just want to open up space if there’s any questions that were left unasked or anything you would really like to share before we leave. That was the space for it.
Trudy: Yeah, I have something actually that I thought would be really nice as we were been speaking and sharing. I think it’s really important for communities not to be an island, like especially as we’re coming into these really deep times of turmoil on so many levels and from so many angles and aspects. We need to actually really be there for each other and communities can tend to have this really insular movement, but actually we need to have a bit of both. We need to be able to work within and shape and help each other grow, but we also need to be able to give and receive from the outside. There’s so much that communities can do. I think this is a lot of the learning also that’s come from this project for communities as well. We can’t be insular. We’ve got to give out. We’ve got to be open and create space when things do get bad to be able to welcome people in if we need to and also to share the knowledge. The ecovillages have been living laboratories for however many years. Traditional villages, Indigenous communities have so much knowledge, so much insight, so much wisdom. There’s a lot that needs to be shared with the broader community and there’s a responsibility there to be able to share this with open hearts and not to be afraid of it, to share it openly with governments as well. All the findings that we have and to say these are important things and we need to integrate this into wider society. How can we get this information out there? How can we share trainings and workshops, inviting people to come in and see what’s happening, inviting governments to come in and see what’s happening? I think there’s a beautiful opportunity for ecovillages to really open up. That’s one of the things that really came up for me as we were talking. I think if we look at it from a regional lens, regions can do that too. I think that’s what one of the projects that Kin shared, the Ubuntu Tukapwa, a way of that inter-regional collaboration. There’s again, I feel like more opportunity there as well.
Eva: Thank you both so much for your insights, your time and your years of service to the network. It was amazing talking with you.
Trudy & Kin: Thanks Eva.
OUTRODUCTION
Join us again next week as we continue the conversation over what it means to be resilient in our time of deepening polycrisis. While you wait for the next episode of Community Resilience, we invite you to explore more about the Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project by visiting us online at ecovillage.org/resilience.
GEN Staff
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